A recent survey by CESI Debt Solutions found that 80% of married couples spend money their spouse doesn’t know about. The provider of debt management and debt counseling services polled 200 Americans and found that 18.5% of married people have a credit card their spouse doesn’t know about and 15% have a secret bank account.

Secret Purchases

While there can be a variety of reasons someone decides to spend money in secret, 60% of those surveyed said they keep purchases secret to avoid problems at home. Furthermore, 38% feared that if their spouse found out about their secret spending it would result in a separation or divorce. The

Read more…

The trend in firming home prices solidified in the second quarter with more metropolitan areas showing increases from a year ago, aided by a surge in home sales driven by the home buyer tax credit, according to the latest survey by the National Association of Realtors®.

In the second quarter, 100 out of 155 metropolitan statistical areas¹ (MSAs) had higher median existing single-family home prices in comparison with the second quarter of 2009, including 14 with double-digit increases; two were unchanged and 53 metros showed price declines. In the first quarter of this year 91 areas had higher prices, while only 26 MSAs experienced annual price gains in second quarter of 2009.

The national median existing single-family price was $176,900 in the second quarter, up 1.5 percent from $174,200 in the same period of 2009.

Read more…

The Wausau Daily Herald did its readers a great disservice by running the StatePoint Media article, “Get more money when selling your home,” July 10. The one-sided article inaccurately cites and distorts findings of a National of Association of Realtors® study.

It is patently false that REALTOR.com, the NAR website, accepts property information from individual owners or from the ForSalebyOwner.com website. Only properties listed by a licensed real estate broker are displayed on REALTOR.com.

Quoting the 2009 NAR Profile of Home Buyers and Sellers, the article misleads readers about the effectiveness of unrepresented sellers selling their homes more quickly than they could with the help of a real estate professional. The

Read more…

Illinois Attorney General Lisa Madigan explains why consumers need protection from debt settlement scams by comparing them to doctors who make patients sicker rather than returning them to good health. Blogging on the Huffington Post, Ms. Madigan notes that passage of the Illinois Debt Settlement Consumer Protection Act enacts the strongest protection in the U.S. from unethical debt settlement operators. Madigan estimates that 30 to 40 percent of bankruptcy filings occur after consumers have dealt with debt settlement companies.

Read more…